GRATEFUL GUITARS left to right: ● Jerry Garcia with the Cripe Lightning Bolt, Grateful Dead, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, August 1993. Photo: Bob Minkin. ● Skip Vangelas and Andy Logan with Rick Turner’ s“ Little Brown,” Guild Theater, Menlo Park, CA, February 11, 2025. Photo: Bob Minkin.
guitar that became known as“ Lightning Bolt.” It shared the general silhouette of Tiger and Rosebud but with the proportions slightly exaggerated, the horns more flared, the whole form pushed a little further in every direction. Garcia played it in August 1993 in Oregon and said it was the guitar he had always been waiting for. He played it, and a companion guitar called“ Top Hat,” through the rest of his life. Lightning Bolt is now ensconced in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cripe tragically died in 1996, a year after Garcia, when the workshop where he also built fireworks exploded.
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